The ROG Xonar Phoebus Solo sound card features an EMI shield and exclusive ASUS Hyper Grounding technology that significantly reduce the detrimental effects of the electromagnetic interference present inside all desktop PCs. Hyper Grounding technology brings the considerable motherboard expertise of ASUS to audio products, with a multi-layer PCB and high-quality power supply that help eliminate electrical noise from nearby components, resulting in cleaner, less distorted audio. Together with the high-fidelity PCM1796 digital-to-analog converter, the ROG Xonar Phoebus Solo delivers clear and crisp sound with a 118dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which means gamers will hear and experience every audio detail.

Power for headphone users
Many gamers play wearing headphones to avoid disturbing others and ROG Xonar Phoebus Solo is one of the few soundcards to use the top-flight TPA6120A2 with 600ohm impedance for superior sound clarity. Xonar Phoebus Solo also features Dolby Home Theater V4 audio enhancement for cinematic surround sound both with external speakers and headphones. Support for the new DTS UltraPC II audio technology also ensures superior audio quality for every PC application, including gaming, movie-watching and even internet telephone calls.

Dedicated game profiles and Xonar Phoebus driver update
Genre-optimized game audio profiles allow gamers to choose from four different audio presets with ROG Xonar Phoebus Solo. Profiles for first person shooters, real time strategy, role playing and racing stimulation games mean gamers can enjoy audio tuned specifically for the game their playing.

no thanks, their driver support is beyond bad.. switched back to creative today after years with the DX, NEVER AGAIN Asus, NEVER.

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You're totally right.

Seeing as I haven't had any of those updates for almost two years, I laughed when I read that part about "updated" drivers. Unless Asus radically change their stance on software support, I don't think I'll buy another sound card from them.

Seeing as I haven't had any of those updates for almost two years, I laughed when I read that part about "updated" drivers. Unless Asus radically change their stance on software support, I don't think I'll buy another sound card from them.

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lol no updated xonar drivers hey... U clearly didn't look very hard. What, did you go to Asus support and couldn't find a driver and gave up...

I have been using these drivers for bloody ages now, they are godlike!!!

Seeing as I haven't had any of those updates for almost two years, I laughed when I read that part about "updated" drivers. Unless Asus radically change their stance on software support, I don't think I'll buy another sound card from them.

Absolute silence without compromising performance is my only benchmark score.

Ppl say Creative is bad. Look at ASUS. They are rehashing exactly the same audio chip ever since they started with soundcards, their drivers are pathetic and ugly and they release them once or twice a decade. I'm not gonna say Creative is brilliant at that but at čeast they release them like twice a year. ANd what i hated the most was that buggy horrible GX mode which never worked right and crashed all the time. And 3D audio positioning in games was horrible.

Besides, i've had many Creative cards and they were great. SB 128, SB Live!, SB Audigy 4 Value, SB X-Fi XM, X-Fi Forte (Auzentech) and now i've ordered SB Z. Never had any problems and the sound was superb, especially in games. So Creative is what i'll stick with.

You realize that he has nothing to do with asus right, and the maker of those drivers think exactly the same as we do, that asus have horrible driver support, and i have been using the uni xonar drivers since they got out, because without them, my DX was unuseable.

No thanks bro, i think ill have. and i cant belive i ever had to say this... ill have to say im gonna go for the company with .. decent driver support, actually outright GOOD drivers on the SB Z series right now.
Oh and for anyone wondering about the upgrade from DX to just the Z, its pretty big, specially in games.

You realize that he has nothing to do with asus right, and the maker of those drivers think exactly the same as we do, that asus have horrible driver support, and i have been using the uni xonar drivers since they got out, because without them, my DX was unuseable.

No thanks bro, i think ill have. and i cant belive i ever had to say this... ill have to say im gonna go for the company with .. decent driver support, actually outright GOOD drivers on the SB Z series right now.
Oh and for anyone wondering about the upgrade from DX to just the Z, its pretty big, specially in games.

Absolute silence without compromising performance is my only benchmark score.

You haven't seen ASUS software then...

Creative ditched their decade old driver framework and replaced it with completely new framewor starting with Recon3D soundcards. SB Z are second generation and they use the same Recon3D framework which is much better. And the interface design is very good imo. The one on X-Fi wasn't bad but mode switching was kinda annoying even though i mostly just ued Gaming Mode for everything.

went from a Xonar D2X, STX and used nothing but UNified drivers (brainbit) but i still found the experience very lacking specially when it came to gaming.

I moved to an SB-Z about 2 months ago. couldnt be happier with it, though I do admit the drivers need a little tweaking. there are some issues when switching from analogue to DDL. The creative SB interface has a lot more options and settings then any Xonar driver package though 'SBX Pro Studio' (formerly known as CMSS-3D and XFi-Crystalizer) was implemented and sounded a lot better on the older XFi range of cards.